>> Thursday, January 14, 2016

I’m back again with more about our grocery bill and eats for this week. (Don’t miss last week’s post about our fresh start for the new year.) The grand total we spent at Aldi was $60. At Wegmans, we spent $48, bringing our total grocery bill to $108. Here’s more about what ingredients we bought and how we’re using them.

The Plan

Since breakfasts and lunches have stayed relatively consistent since last week, I’ll skip over them in list form. We eat a lot of oatmeal and cereal for breakfast with green smoothies. For lunch, it’s crazy big salads (for Stephen) and PBJ or grilled cheese for Ada. I like homemade hummus melts or egg salad.

* This is the one night we don’t do family dinner. Ada usually eats freezer leftovers. This week she’ll be having some frozen stuffed shells (she loves them!).

Highlights

//1: We wasted basically no food last week. I even froze the leftover pizza sauce to save for this week’s pie! It feels really good to look in my refrigerator at the end of the week and see that it’s almost empty. There are some ingredients that are hearty and can last longer, so if we’re nearing the weekend and more fragile ingredients are getting droopy -- we’ll make a plan to use them up and save the carrots, oranges, potatoes, etc. for next week.

//2: We also shifted our shopping to Saturday mornings. I didn’t know this would make a difference, and we didn’t even do it on purpose -- it just worked out that way. But WOW. Talk about a great way to combat weekend takeout! Our pantry and fridge are full of food so we don’t have as much temptation to grab a takeout menu.

Making food at home has become this huge part of our weekend activities now. So, it’s also serving as a source of entertainment (trying new recipes is really fun!), saving us even more money.

//3: We’re trying to avoid eating the same meal over and over again, so I will start doing more freezer cooking as the weeks roll on. The veggie burgers I made (24 in all) will last a good while. That being said, it does take some energy to make sure that all our meals are utilizing similar ingredients. My trick is having a “breakfast for dinner” night where I can just roast a good number of veggies that need to be used up.

//4: We’re trying to stick below $100 total for food each week. This is a big improvement because I estimate that we were spending about $130 at Wegmans PLUS at least (at LEAST!) $50 on takeout per week in recent months. That’s an $80 savings per week we’re striving toward, all while eating healthy foods and connecting better as a family. I do think we’ll spend much less at the store this week, but time will tell.

//5: Oh, and we’re also going to occasionally try “no buy” weeks where we dig deep into the cupboards and freezer drawers to use up what we already have. Of course, we’ll need to get basics -- but I think it’s a great way to save in a pinch.